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Microsoft Applies For Page-Turn Animation Patent
eldavojohn writes "Ever seeking to out innovate their competition, Microsoft has applied for a patent on animating page flips in devices like the Nook or Kindle. The application summary reads, 'One or more pages are displayed on a touch display. A page-turning gesture directed to a displayed page is recognized. Responsive to such recognition, a virtual page turn is displayed on the touch display. The virtual page turn actively follows the page-turning gesture. The virtual page turn curls a lifted portion of the page to progressively reveal a back side of the page while progressively revealing a front side of a subsequent page. A lifted portion of the page is given an increased transparency that allows the back side of the page to be viewed through the front side of the page. A page-flipping gesture quickly flips two or more pages.' Maybe you've seen this before?"
.... reading.....
I've seen this on Flash years ago as well as a Shockwave (Director)... the only thing they bring to the table is "on a touch display".
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
You gotta be kidding. There have been Flash animations like this available for years. I guess this is an example of a patent process gone wrong.
Microsoft Fast Page Flip Lick Moistener (TM). It's for when you moisten your index or other page-flipping finger on your tongue to flip faster.
The real question is, has anyone seen this before:
Claim 1. A digital reading device, comprising:
a first touch display region;
a second touch display region;
a logic subsystem operatively coupled to the first touch display region and the second touch display region; and
a data-holding subsystem holding instructions executable by the logic subsystem to:
display a back side of a first page on the first touch display region and a front side of a second page on the second touch display region;
recognize a page-turning gesture directed to an outer corner of the second page;
display, responsive to the page-turning gesture, a virtual page turn that actively follows the page-turning gesture, the virtual page turn curling a lifted portion of the second page to progressively reveal a back side of the second page while progressively revealing a front side of a third page and while progressively covering the back side of the first page;
recognize a page-flipping gesture directed along an outer edge of the second touch display region; and
display, responsive to advancement of the page-flipping gesture, a virtual page flip in which pages quickly flip from the second touch display region to the first touch display region.
Doesn't matter if it's been seen before, if you have a boatload of cash you need a boatload of defensive patents to keep the parasites who don't produce a thing off your back. Maybe companies like MS, that actually make stuff (whether you think their stuff is good or bad) and contribute, should just be auto-granted immunity from all that bullshit. As it is right now they have to think of and officially enumerate everything they don't want some worthless sleazeball non-company looking for a quick buck coming after them for.
I used that in a short story I wrote that was published in the 80s and it's on record both in the US and Canadian copyright systems.
MSFT can't patent what I already described in a public magazine.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I'd flip Microsoft a gesture but they've probably patented that too.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
http://www.pixelwit.com/blog/page-flip/ I can flip the page back and forth on my works MultiTocuh monitor. Exactly like MS describes it. I've seen this about 5+ years ago on sites.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Patents can and do work other places in the world, just no in US
This is blinging
Ok, quick little game of 'spot the prior art'.
My entry: Master of Magic, by Microprose software (currently rights are held by Atari, I think). c1994-ish? Showed page turning animations in a spell book when you clicked on next and prior pages, creating a virtual book. Sounds like what MS is trying to do here, so it might count.
Can anyone beat 1994? There must be earlier stuff than that..
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Didn't the "Notepad" "Desk Accessory" in the Original (old-school) MacOS do page-turn animation?
Animated virtual pages? Nicholas Negroponte has been there and done that, back in 1978.
Circumcision is child abuse.
If IP theft is possible, then surely IP fraud must be? If I claimed to own any random houses I happened to see, and put them down as security on financial documents, this would be viewed dimly by the courts. This is that.
If patents secure intellectual 'property' then where's the aggressive penalty enforcement for intentional (or unintentional but negligent) misrepresentation of property rights? Given the money at issue, and their strain of their enforcement on the court system, these penalties ought to be severe, esp. for corporations. If anybody knows a government looking to increase revenue, then here's some.
This was requested back during the Courier development years, and filed in January of 2009. So no, there was no prior application or device on the market that did this. And it damn sure isn't a copy of the iPad. This headline is sensationalism at it's best.
What I don't understand is why you keep bending over to get royally ass-raped by the big corporations all the time?!
Now I won't have to suffer through yet another pointless UI animation for an action that should be instant.
See that "Preview" button?
I'm guessing that most of the intelligent, technically knowledgeable people have left Microsoft. So now non-technical employees are pretending to run a technological company.
Filing for patents like this has absolutely nothing to do with technical people. What probably happened is something like:
1. Engineer designs cool interface with gestures and page animations
2. He shows his project manager neat interface
3. Project manager like it, sends it up the chain to see what higher ups think
4. VP over section likes the idea, sends it to legal (like everything else) to make sure it won't be a problem
5. Legal drone sees no prior patent filings for the interface idea. Sends idea to his boss.
6. Legal over-drone notes no existing patents and thus automatically files a patent for the interface idea.
7. ???
8. Profit!
The software patents filed by a company have little or no bearing on the quality of the engineers working there.
One indication that the smart people have left is when a company brings out a new version of software, and the big change is in the menus. Menu changes are something people who don't care about technology can do.
You don't say?.
(The Microsoft Vista operating system was, it is said, not a failure, but an intentional method of getting people to pay for two operating systems, by deliberately releasing an unfinished one.)
Said by somebody who almost certainly never even ran Vista. Vista's real problems were:
The way software patents work right now is every company is trying to get as many as possible. It's basically the Cold War all over again, except instead of nuclear weapons it's software patents. Microsoft is doing it for the same reasons Google, Apple, Palm, etc are: Mutual Assured Destruction.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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Robert A. Heinlein in his 1957 time-travel novel described exactly this idea in detail when his protagonist awoke in the "far distant" year of 2000. So it is hardly new.
how does this differ from the ipad reader?
It differs by predating the iPad by over a year.
However, I don't think that it is prior art that will invalidate this patent. None of the examples that I have read here do so. Note to all: the headline is a lie! This is not about a simple transition animation.
What should invalidate this is that the whole idea is the most obvious use of a gesture interface ever! It looks like one of those simplistic examples they use in the introduction of a book on user interface design. Getting a patent is more than just being first to apply - you also have to have a non-obvious invention too. Unfortunately, the patent office is not known for understanding this.
The Acorn Archimedes, circa 1984, had a image animation demo in the default software package which had a rendered page turning effect similar to the one described.
The ARM chip was the only processor in a desktop machine at the time powerful enough to do this by CPU alone. It would be years before an Intel chip would be powerful enough to do the same thing.
Andrew van der Stock
Uh there are so many reasons Vista sucked. I work for a company that's a Microsoft partner and even the "koolaid" drinkers there won't deny that Vista sucked. Windows 7 less so (some things are better, but others aren't really an improvement from Windows 2000).
;) ).
1) It took years for the hardware companies to stop making so many drivers that bluescreen XP or cause other problems (heck some still do), so it's no surprise if Vista gets crappy drivers. If Microsoft or anybody was expecting otherwise, they're stupid.
2) While Windows NT/2K/XP allowed users to not be administrator (and I've set up many machines that way, for myself and others), Windows XP in the installation process tended to make the first user an admin and not make it easy for "newbies" to set up something like the OSX/Ubuntu/Win7 model.
Lastly, there has really been very little UI improvement from the OSS world (wobbly windows don't make you more productive) or Microsoft.
I do like the application grouping thing in Windows 7 (but I'd prefer if you could adjust the task button positions within an app group).
Other than that, Windows 7 sucks. Using the start menu (or the start menu search) is slower than my current XP config at home (classic mode with custom menus so I can use winkey, <number>, <number> to launch my commonly used stuff very quickly).
The search sucks. The network configuration screen is overly complex and cluttered.
FWIW, I'm the sort who likes stuff like Tree Style Tabs for Mozilla, the type of person who has lots of tabs and windows open, and has written a program to allow a user to quickly set up hotkeys to switch amongst tasks/windows. I don't care about those stupid animations. If I want a window, I want it NOW, not after some fancy song and dance.
Don't get me wrong, I can see why others like those animations (they're like fancy cutscenes in games), but the UI designers should also cater for those who want to use their precious UI to actually get work done faster (so that we can waste more time on other stuff e.g Slashdot
On slashdot, we see many of these bogus patent articles as well as several patent troll litigation articles. On everyone we see the same tired arguments, hey, this was done since the 80's or that company implemented it long long before that! Sometimes we even hear, hey this company just bought the unused patent from a dead guy and doesn't even make a product, which invalidates the patent.
Well, non of that crap matters in the US. Seriously, how often do these patent trolls win? Almost always. That patent / legal system is so fucked up that actual law matters very little anymore.
This is one big reason that companies continue to pull out of the US.
Just do a quick Google search for "broken patent system" or "out of control patent system" and you will see this has been going on for years. Hell, back in 2000 folks were sure any time now there would be patent reform, yet the we are no closer to it.
It's time for you to get involved people. It's time to write to your representatives to demand reform. The US patent system is a drain on our economy and seriously hampers proper innovation. Something must be done soon, time is running out for the US. Well..at least IMO.
I probably should have tried harder to get a job there back in the day, when being a MS employee was a path to personal financial success. Nowadays every couple of months I get a call from some child MS recruiter, who doesn't actually work for MS but for some Recruitment Process Outsourcing company, who hasn't read my resume, and who wants me to do some job that anybody who actually did read my resume would realize is a lousy match to my skill set. Not only that, he wants me to work for some other outsourcing company so that they can take 1/3 of my bill rate and send me to work there with few benefits and a funny-colored badge that says Non-Microsoft Employee. They can stuff it. I assume their sheer size and inertia will carry them for another decade or two as a going concern, but I wouldn't give them much longer than that.